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I've tried Googling this and can't seem to find anything that is overly helpful. I'm wanting to turn my finished horse into a small, square pillow. I already have the fabric for it. I'm just not sure how the cross stitch gets attached to the pillow. Applique it and then stitch the pillow? Stitch a backing onto it and stitch it right into a pillow that way? Also, my cross stitch has a distinct background. The background is dark brown and the aida cloth around it is cream. It is going on a fabric that looks like a red barn siding.

I did a google search for cross stitch pillow and looked at the images - this is one I found..



It looks like she sewed strips of fabric to two opposite sides of the cross stitch, and then to the two remaining sides, before sewing the front and back together and finishing it. Personally, if I were making a cross stitched piece into a pillow, after I finished assembling the front, I would line it - maybe a piece of fleece or felt or even batting? Whatever scraps of something slightly padded you have so that the back of your cross stitch doesn't rub against the pillow form or fiberfill.. that will give it some protection.. and if you're using fiberfill, it would also help to keep any of it poking through the weave of the fabric you did the cross stitch on.

Edit to add: Do you want the fabric visible around the finished piece? if so then I would leave an even border around each side before attahing the fabric. If you don't want the fabric visible, I would actually attatch the fabric OVER your stitching.. covering up the very last row of stitches on each side - that way you're sure that there is no bare fabric peeking through. If you don't want to cover up any of the finished piece, you could just stitch another round of Xs all around the entire piece in the background color and use that to cover up - I had a framer suggest this to me once and thought it was a BRILLIANT idea since we work hard on patterns all the way to the edge.. just adding a single round of color similar to the background that is ok to cover up is a good way to make sure the fabric is properly covered.

I would stitch a back onto it and then just follow the instructions for making a pillow. You don't want to stitch it directly into a pillow (with no backing) as the wadding might poke through the aida.

I am going to be making 2 projects into pillows. But I am nowhere near finishing either one of them.

I bought a 14" pillow form for both. And will be making a cover for it, the whole front being my stitched piece. I want the cover to be able to be removed should it ever need to be washed.

Something like this tutorial.
http://nestingnewbie.blogspot.com/2011/ ... orial.html" target="_blank

I've finished several of my cross stitches into cushion/pillows - the majority of which were envelope cushions with the back of the cushion sewn in exactly the way Maggie's example described. As for backing the stitched piece, with some I used iron on interfacing (which also adds some strength to the stitching) and with others I didn't bother backing the stitching at all and you can't tell the difference - however all of mine were stitched on linen or evenweave not aida, so no show through of the cushion pad.

Oooohh. I like the idea of putting interfacing behind the cross stitch! I took a photo of my cross stitch on top of the fabric I will be making the pillow out of. As you can see, it probably wouldn't look so awesome with the aida cloth showing. It just doesn't match at all.

Looking at that pic I would definately attach the fabric one stitch in from the edge of the cross stitch so that no aida shows at all. And since the lettering is so close to the edge on the 2 sides, maybe adding 1 or 2 rows the background color to those two sides so that you have room to stitch the fabric on might be a good idea?